1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image recording apparatus for recording an image onto a surface of a sheet-like base material, and a base material supply apparatus for supplying a base material to a recorder that records an image onto a surface of a sheet-like base material.
2. Description of the Background Art
Image recording apparatuses are known, which unwind a sheet-like base material from a cylindrical roll and write an image on a surface of the base material by inkjet printing or the like.
With these image recording apparatuses, the quality (image quality) of an image to be written on the surface of the base material will improve if, for example, ink landing on the base material is easy to spread over the surface of the base material during inkjet printing. Thus, there are cases where pre-processing for improving ink wettability is performed on the base material before printing. One example of a technique for performing pre-processing is a technique using a corona discharge treatment apparatus to impart required wettability to a sheet (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-open Nos. 2001-131314 and 2012-81608, for example). There is also a constant demand for compact image recording apparatuses from the viewpoint of securing installation locations.
However, with the techniques disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open Nos. 2001-131314 and 2012-81608 in which the corona discharge treatment apparatus uses a relatively high voltage for discharge, if the corona discharge treatment apparatus is disposed in the vicinity of a recorder for recording an image or the like, noise caused by the discharge may be superimposed on various types of signals, causing various problems such as disturbances in images to be printed. Such a problem arises not only from apparatuses that perform pre-processing on a base material by a corona discharge, but are also common to apparatuses in general that perform other pre-processing such as the application of plasma to a base material to modify the surface of the base material at a relatively high voltage.